Headlines

Daniel Foster

The rehabilitation of Mitt Romney

Of course, the post hoc love fest raises the question of how much of this good will was there for the taking ante hoc. That is, could the Romney campaign have done more to make their guy likable when it counted?

I’ve heard a few theories on this from people who either covered the campaign from the outside or were close with those who ran it from the inside. The most widespread explanation is that the campaign made a deliberate decision to limit the resources spent selling Romney-the-man. The thinking was that they couldn’t beat the president on likability in any event, and were better suited by selling Romney, to paraphrase Ramesh Ponnuru, as a robot programmed to create jobs. A second, less obvious but perhaps more intriguing, theory is that leading with an account of Romney’s good deeds would have entailed delving deeply into the weeds of Mormonism (because, for example, much of Romney’s personal kindnesses came in his capacity as a church leader, and much of his charitable donations came in the form of tithing) and that this would have opened a whole new can of invertebrates that the campaign wasn’t eager to deal with.

One or both may well be true, and, combined with Romney’s apparent constitutional incapability to pat himself on the back for being a decent human being, they may have made the cuddlization of Romney a dubious strategy. But it isn’t as if the campaign worked to keep the stories secret. They did what they could, in convention testimonials, in YouTube ads, and in the mouths of surrogates (not least Paul Ryan in the nationally televised VP debate, though his boosterism was lost in the vice president’s Nicholsonesque cackling), to spread the word. But it was not preponderating. Why wasn’t it preponderating?

Blowback

Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.

Thank you Arnold. I wish Mitt had responded to the false narrative that Bush drove the economy into the ditch – when it was the CRA inspired sub prime mortgage debacle which caused the banking crisis. And I wish he had disputed Obama’s claim to have ended the war in Iraq. He must have felt that defending Bush would cost him support.

As for being more aggressive against Obama, the strategy was to win Independents. And he succeeded at that. I’m not sure being more aggressive would have won him sufficiently more conservative votes than the Independent votes he would have lost with that strategy.

You don’t have to convince me (or Mitt) that Obama is the enemy. A candidate has to be true to himself. Mitt is a gentleman who appeals to the intellect, not a street fighter.

I’m surprised that so many conservatives apparently had to be convinced that Mitt is (infinitely) better than Obama or that Obama isn’t an outright disaster.

There are two fundamentally different worldviews about character and decency here.

One says that compassion is what you do with your own time and your own money, carrying out personal acts of kindness, and that you don’t make a big deal of it.

The other says that compassion is what you force others to do and pay for on your behalf, while you stand aside and gather the glory as someone who “cares.” Bonus: you can spit on the people actually paying the freight of your “compassion,” and be loved all the more for it.

I’m surprised that so many conservatives apparently had to be convinced that Mitt is (infinitely) better than Obama or that Obama isn’t an outright disaster.

Basilsbest on November 16, 2012 at 10:31 PM

..I agree with your sentiments about Mitt’s consummate decency. Recriminations are pointless at this juncture. Our defeat was total.

“We” either have to learn how to compromise our principles, fight dirtier, and cheat better — thus becoming Democrats. Or “we” have to adhere to our principles, refuse to compromise and work for a qualified candidate — thus becoming Libertarians.